Tuesday, April 30, 2013

I just posted an article featuring details of the new book by spoken word artist, Henry Rollins. To read that post , click here.

The first batch of books, have been signed by Rollins. I purchased a copy yesterday and when I learned that some copies were signed, there was a slight twinge of resistance inside of me. It seemed rather odd to me that I would have any kind of physical reaction towards something so seemingly benign. It got me thinking about signatures.

Signatures are important to a lot of people who consider themselves admirers of someones work. Musicians, sports figures, authors, painters, and so on. I've never understood the value of signatures, or autographs if you prefer. For some, there is a monetary value, for others it's about status and pure relish. Some feel important when they can flaunt their merch, and tell the story of how they earned their squiggle."And so there he was. I asked if he'd sign my book and he did." Ta-da!

I think it's great that there are so many artists who understand that there are fans (I'm not a "fan" of that word) who would count themselves lucky to receive a signature on a piece of paper, piece of art, a sports ball or bat, or a shirt. Some value signatures so much that request signatures on a body parts, so that they can tattoo over it. Now, that's dedication. Frightening dedication, but dedication none the less.

Even as a child, I didn't see the value in signatures, nor photo shots. I remember boppin' around to Michael Jackson cassette tapes in my Walkman (remember those?) and thinking that I wouldn't want to meet the genius that was he, because he's met so many people, that he'd forget me almost instantly. It wasn't that I was yearning for a connection; I simply felt that I'd get no joy from a fleeting meeting.

I remember in college, I had a friend who shared my view, and he described out sentiments so precisely and humorously. He said; "What would I say to them? Hi, my name is _______. So...how about all those experiences we never had together?"

Perfect, ay?

I imagine it takes a lot of energy for artists to pose for photos. I sometimes wonder if they ever feel like props. Smile. Turn here. Turn there. Can I get one more? Obnoxious aggression out of arrogance or because if you don't push your way through, you might not leave with a prized possession.

Not all fans behave so savagely; and not all have the finesse of a teeny-bopper or a metal head. No offense to teeny-boppers or metal heads.I dig pop, I dig metal. I digress.

Concerts are always magical experiences about me. After each one, I hit the little girl's room and then I make a b-line to the parking lot to find the needle in the haystack that is my car. I have never felt the need to set foot in the long lines waiting outside a bus.

My next concert experience will be Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes along with Sun-Ra, playing at The Hollywood Bowl. CocoRosie's new album drops soon, and I hope to catch a show when they tour. A few of my favorite artists; and I feel fortunate to be able to be present for a transcendent sense of community. Lights, speakers, and a large group of people who all have one thing in common. It is my hope that performers empathize with their audiences in that they think about their own pleasing experiences when they are the ones sitting in chairs.

So, thank you to all the artists who have impacted me and continue to do so. Thanks for energizing me, breaking me, and making me think. You are in my cd, book and movie collections, and it's great when I can see you spit it out live. I'll go forward with all you've offered me, but I won't need your signature.

Storyteller and music artist, Henry Rollins dropped a new book yesterday. The book consists of 100 articles written for the LA Weekly, dated 2011 to 2012.

Description from the website:

For reasons of space, the Weekly must often slightly truncate the pieces and also sees fit to change the name of the piece.

So, what you read there isn't always what I sent them. This is one of the reasons I wanted to put this book out. Also, knowing there are a lot of people out there without the time to go to some website and read something every week, I thought it would be a good idea to have the articles all in one place.

Rollins continues to write for the LA Weekly, and his article posts each Thursday.

Monday, April 29, 2013

In April 2011, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, held a concert to honor his former bass player, Ron Asheton, who died in 2009 of a heart attack. The concert took place Asheton's hometown. in Ann Arbor, Michigan. July 17, 1948 – January 1, 2009 Asheton's hometown of Ann Arbor,
Michigan.

Henry Rollins took front and center as he performed the Stooges' tune, "I Got a Right." The former Black Flag frontman did a swell job, as I imagine Iggy was somewhere watching from the wings.

Rollins is as impressive as ever. It's a treat to watch him perform music -- he lends his voice and oh so rad stage presence, when paying tribute to artist he admires -- notably when he performed with UK band, The Ruts in 2007, as a tribute to the deceased guitarist Paul Fox.

Per Cubarrubia, The Ron Asheton Tribute Concert will be released on DVD on June 4th. All
profits will go towards the Ron Asheton Foundation, which supports
animal welfare and music.

Iggy Pop and the Stooges' new album, Ready to Die, drops tomorrow, April 30th, 2013. I pre-ordered my copy, a while ago. I will be pleased to meet it's arrival.

An always thrill for me is to hear the magic that is Mike Watt on bass. He's a talent of course, but my affinity towards him is doubled as he was a part of San Pedro, California punk band, The Minutemen. The Minutemen existed in the 80s. Not many bands come from my hometown and current residence of Pedro. Watt joined Iggy Pop and the Stooges in 2003.

Although I'm not a fan of the word "dick" or casual sex, it's fully possible for me to see the importance of this article and hopefully a following discussion from its readers. Full article below. Posted on XO Jane.

Why Do Women Always Have to Be The Condom Police, Anyway?

Never did it occur to wonder why it was that I was
so often the sole person responsible for insisting on safe sex, why I
was positioned repeatedly as the condom police, posed at the entrance to
my vagina with a whistle and a handheld stop sign.

When I reminisce on my 16-year history of sweaty, tangled limbs, I don't always see condoms.

I took the same classes everyone else did in high school. I
technically had the right information. But perhaps because my boundaries
were stampeded over by a group of rapist fuckheads when I was so young, I was not at all emotionally equipped to set and enforce them surrounding condom use.

When I was around 15, I had a horrible boyfriend who would IM with
his ex-girlfriend for hours while I hung around in his room reading
"Transmetropolitan" or whatever nerd shit I could find on the floor
until he got bored and decided to put his dick in me. He was
good-looking, obviously. We didn't use condoms.

One day, he told me that he had been to the doctor and been diagnosed
with a "urinary tract infection" and here, the doctor had said I should
probably take these pills just in case. I felt fine, I told him, so I
don't need to take any pills. He insisted. I demurred. A few days later
he broke down and told me that his "urinary tract infection" was
chlamydia and I really needed to see the doctor. Chlamydia in women
often has no symptoms -- I felt fine, but I tested positive for the
infection at the free clinic I went to with my girlfriend. The doctor
there prescribed a course of antibiotics, which luckily is all it takes
to treat chlamydia. I didn't even break up with the guy.

When I was in college, I had a couple of dates with a well-off older
man who really hated condoms, turning every encounter into a tug-of-war
over the issue of safe sex. He would try to push his naked penis inside
me, I would squirm away and say "No," he would bust out the classic "But
I can't FEEL it with a condom on" and I would eventually relent.

This wasn't a particularly unusual situation. I only remember it so
clearly because once, angry after my repeated refusals, he blurted,
“Don’t you want to have my baby?” in a tone of voice that suggested I
was nothing short of stuck-up if I didn’t. (I didn't, except for the
fleeting thought that letting a rich guy get you pregnant is in some
circles a form of financial planning.)

Like I said though, this wasn't unusual. I can count on one hand the
number of men I've been with who even volunteered to put on a condom.
Most at least attempted to enter me without one, and while I usually
managed to say "No," or "We should get a condom," they'd respond with
"Shhhh," or "Just for a minute," or worse, wordlessly carry on like I'd
never said anything.

And a lot of the time, I would just let it happen. I could manage to
get the words out, but not to enforce them, like the parent who
threatens to send you to bed without dinner but never does. No one ever
listened to me.

I've been lucky to have never had an unwanted pregnancy and to avoid
most of the STIs I laid awake at night worrying about, but I have had abnormal pap smears due
to HPV, the virus that will lead to cervical cancer deaths for 4,000
women this year. I found it easier to let a dude potentially kill me
with his dick than fucking speak up and insist on what I wanted.

I have always blamed myself for this -- for my poor decisions, my
lack of agency. I have been ashamed of my spotty record of sexual
safety, so unlike those I see represented in most women's media, where
everyone seems to be a perfect paragon of sexual health and express
abject horror at the idea of unsafe sex.

I have wondered why I couldn't just get it together around condom use, what was wrong with me
that I kept screwing up so badly again and again. Never did it occur to
wonder why it was that I was so often the sole person responsible for
insisting on safe sex, why I was positioned repeatedly as the condom
police, posed at the entrance to my vagina with a whistle and a handheld
stop sign.

It's not as if only my health was at risk, after all. Even in the
most casual of casual sex situations -- sex clubs, one-night stands --
men would try to cajole or plead or just play dumb to get their way.
Often they had condoms that they wouldn't pull out until after I stopped
them attempting to enter me without one. They all seemed to see it as
my job to insist on safe sex; their default was to have unprotected sex
with me if they could get away with it.

I got an email recently from a favorite reader of mine (she dressed up as me for Halloween), letting me know that she'd had a "bad experience" no actually a "date rape" no actually just a "rape" recently and she'd written about it
and wondered if I would take a look. What happened was that she was
having sex with a man and midway through he removed the condom. When she
noticed, he told her it was "no big deal."

One part of what she wrote, for Girls Leadership Program Boston_GLOW, stuck out to me in particular. She says that she emailed a friend about the experience, who wrote her the following:

“I had a disturbing revelation the other day when I realized that
[current partner] is the first guy I've slept with who is no nonsense,
no bullshit about condom use. For whatever reason, there are a number of
men who think they have permission not to use condoms, and it always
ends up on you and me and some teenage girl somewhere who just wants to
finish high school without a baby to insist on condom usage, and that is
simply absurd. And until now, I thought that was normal. And it's not.
It shouldn't be."

This isn't every man. Despite my bad experiences, I have also been
with wonderful, respectful men who treated condoms as the price of
admission, who brought and used them without having to be asked, who
never acted as if my health and safety was less important than their
sexual pleasure.

And goddamn if it wasn't fucking relaxing, to know that I didn't have
to fight and enforce my way through our encounters. Goddamn if I didn't
feel safe knowing that my boundaries would be respected just as much
when their dicks were hard as when they weren't.

It seems obvious now, and it's probably another symptom of our
fucked-up culture that it never occured to me before, but DUH: That's
the way sex should always feel.

Below is an article that discusses the stressing, complicated, and contemplated experience of going out for a night on the town. Spending time in public after the sun goes down, is often an act of bravery and negotiation. How has this become normalized? I know why. Do you?

My nights out never consist of alcohol and clubs, but whatever brand of a night out one desires; safety should always be guaranteed.

How safe do women feel on a night out?

For many young people
around the world, a night out often involves seeing friends, dancing and
drinking - and it's not only on St Valentine's day that romance is on
the agenda. But as these young women from five cities around the world
explain, personal safety is rarely far from their minds.

Maissa Bazlamit, 22, Ramallah journalist

Thursday is the big night out for me in Ramallah. I like to go
wherever there is good music and good company. I like drinking shots -
fewer calories, instant effect.

I love to dance, so I never wear heels. I like to make a
statement with what I am wearing. As Oscar Wilde put it, you can never
be over-dressed or over-educated.

There's a thin line between sexy
and slutty. Cross that line and you won't be taken seriously, but you
will certainly get the attention. But then again, who gets to define the
borders?

I'd be lying if I said I don't enjoy the attention of men -
but only from certain people. I don't mind getting attention from
open-minded people, but they make up only 20% of Ramallah, if not less.
However, getting it from the [others] is rather repulsive to me and
upsets me a lot.

It's almost impossible to walk in downtown Ramallah and not
get hassled. [Some] guys take it upon themselves to make walking in
Ramallah for women like walking through hell. I've had so many bad
experiences, I don't even know where to begin.

I do walk on my own at night, but not without constantly
looking over my shoulder, and sometimes even pretending to be on the
phone with my father whenever I see a group of guys walking near me.

Jacky Kemigisa, 20, Kampala student

I usually go out on Fridays or Saturdays, with my friends, dancing and drinking.

The clothes I wear depend on the mood am in, the company that I am with, and which transport I am going to use.

If it is a girls' night out, then
I would wear a body-hugging dress, mostly very short, showing some skin
and a pair of high heels. But that means someone has to pick me up in a
car. If I am going out and using a motorbike taxi, I prefer to wear
jeans and flat shoes.

I don't feel safe walking alone at night at all, but if I am with male friends then I am granted some degree of safety.

I do think about the attention that I am going to get, both
positive and negative. If a gentleman gives me positive and respectful
compliments then I like that kind of attention, but if they are
drunkards throwing negative insults, then I loathe it.

Some nights I go out wanting no attention whether positive or negative, just to sit and laugh and talk with my friends.

I have had hassles, guys throwing insults at me, calling me a slut and asking openly how much I charge for a night.

Men in Uganda expect you to be "decent" - their idea of
decent is long skirts. Some have now adjusted to jeans [but] when young
women wear shorts or skimpy dresses in some parts of Kampala market
vendors can hurl insults like "whore" at you.

Jo Lehmann, 25, Melbourne youth worker

A great night out means a good venue with good friends, listening to good music - lots of laughter and dancing.

I always wear a dress if I'm going out at night. I decide on
how I'm feeling on the day. Am I having a "fat day" and need to hide my
body? Or am I feeling confident and want to show skin?

I guess men look at me when I go
out and am all done up. I have learned to showcase my assets. If I am
in a place I feel comfortable around people I'm attracted to, then I
don't mind people looking at my body. In other circumstances I would
feel very uncomfortable. The way I dress definitely affects the way men
respond.

I have not really had any bad experiences when I have been
out - though I have friends that have had drinks spiked or have been
taken advantage of while drunk.

I don't feel safe walking alone at night - I usually go out close to where I live.

A young journalist who wasn't much older than me was raped
and murdered in a suburb very close to here. It happened in a place
where I frequently go out and I have girlfriends who live there. So, in
light of that incident, my girlfriends and I often discuss safety and
security.

Overall, though, Australia is a great place to be a young woman.

Daniella Brasil, 31, Rio de Janeiro HR manager

Saturday is the big night out. We rarely go to nightclubs. We
usually go to parties with specific attractions, such as a band that's
become a new hit and a DJ.

We mostly wear skirts or dresses - Rio is usually hot, after
all. When the party is less sophisticated, we use flat shoes because
they are more comfortable to spend long hours in, standing and dancing.
When we do wear high heels, we choose the most comfortable kind.

When men are interested in us,
they keep observing us, staring at us. If they realise that we are open
to it, they start a conversation. It's good to be looked at, it makes us
feel pretty and attractive. We don't consider it a lack of respect.

Although we wear clothes that are often tight-fitting or
short, we avoid wearing things that are vulgar. Men are a bit more
"aggressive" and have less respect when women dress up too sensually or
behave in a vulgar manner.

Nothing grave or serious [has ever happened to me]. At worst
you get men that come at you grabbing you or holding your hair, but it's
easy to free yourself. I've had cases where men are very persistent and
spend a big part of the night bugging you. In these cases, we try to
keep a distance and stay close within our group of girlfriends.

[When we go out we] always travel by taxi, because we can't
drink and drive. Since we always go out in a group, we share the cab. On
the way back, the last one to be dropped off has to let us know that
she got home safely.

There's no doubt that Brazil is a good place to be a woman.
There are lots of ways to have fun… the risks are small, we have freedom
and it's easy for us to impose limits and to be respected.

Jillian Rae Greenwood, 23, Ottawa lobbyist

Saturday is my preferred night to go out. I go wherever my friends want to go - I am a sheep, not a shepherd.

I wear a lot of black, but it's still hard to decide which
black items to wear. Sometimes I want to show some cleavage, but I don't
want to misrepresent who I am.

Sometimes I get a glance here or there. I usually don't let
the eye contact linger… even if it's an Einstein in the body of James
Dean, I still feel absolutely dirty, and disgusted, when I feel
someone's eyes looking at my body.

I have had great conversations
with men at bars when I was dressed very conservatively. I personally
feel the conversation is richer when I am dressed conservatively, but it
may be that I am more receptive to having a conversation with a guy who
I know isn't looking at my boobs.

I have had moments where I want scream and give long lectures
to men (or boys, as that would be more fitting) who I witness yelling
degrading comments in the general direction of women. Telling a girl
that you 'know she wants it' is NOT sexy.

It is common to see men at bars who prey on girls who are too
drunk to have the clarity to think: "This guy is a creep, and his body
language is aggressive - I know what he is after, and I need to just
walk away."

I have always been very cautious when walking at night,
especially alone. I do not feel safe walking at night, but I do not
assume that danger lurks behind every corner. I just know that as a
woman, I am at a greater risk. I always keep my hands on my keys in my
pocket, just in case I need a weapon.

"What would you like to see happen as a result of this process?" I
was asked this question by friends and family in late October of 2012.
Then in November by two officers from the LAPD. Later, by a detective.
And three more times by the university staff members assigned to
adjudicate my report of sexual assault –– most recently, on April 2.

This question has haunted me, as I infer it haunts other rape survivors. I have never been able to answer it. Until now.

Invited to write about my experience as a rape victim who is
attempting to "seek justice," it occurred to me finally: I just want to
stop the rape. That's what I want.
---
My rape and the ensuing process was fairly typical. I trusted a man I
was getting to know not to rape me. Then, once raped, I struggled to
re-interpret myself as not-raped, because the pain and horror of
accepting I had been raped was too much for me to bear. Typical.

Where my story isn't as typical begins about one month ago. After my
university failed to take immediate action against the student who raped
me (despite having been provided with several audio recordings in which
my rapist confessed to raping me) and after I became so socially
ostracized that I contemplated suicide, it was suggested to me that I
did not have to wait for the world to decide whether it would advocate
for me or not.

I could self-advocate. I could post my name and photograph and his name and photograph to the Internet.
And so I did.

Two months ago, I wrote a Tumblr post in which I revealed my name and
the name of my rapist and included several photographs, including one
of us together. I wrote, "I’m not going to hide behind anonymity. I am a
part of this society."

This atypical decision has recently garnered me both mainstream media attention and a defamation suit filed by my rapist.
- - -
The story of my rape is full of those "How-could-you-be-so-stupid?"
moments that enable outsiders –– often police, district attorneys and
academic staff –– to dismiss a victim's claims. As if a woman's
"stupidity" can magically transmute rape into not-rape. As if naïveté is
a rapeable offense.

On December 3, 2010, my boyfriend and I attended a holiday party
hosted by fellow students at the University of Southern California. We
had just begun dating two weeks prior. I –– at 21 years old –– was a
virgin because I believed that the intimacy of intercourse was an
emotional and spiritual act that should not be casually shared.

At a friend's pre-party party, our host generously doled out hard
liquor; my date consumed about 10 shots in the span of an hour. He drank
even more at the theatre party that was the main event. When he groped
me embarrassingly on the dance floor, I told him I wanted to leave.

We walked together back to the complex where we both rented
apartments. He was so drunk, I was worried about him and I now believe
he played upon those worries. I offered to feed him a little so he could
take some aspirin for what was surely going to be one hell of a
hangover.

My roommates were out. He and I ended up making out on my couch. When
he started taking off my clothes, I moved the make-out session to my
bedroom in case my roommates came home.

My freshman dorm.

Eventually naked, in my bed, my date told me he wanted to have sex. I
told him repeatedly that I did not want to. That I wanted it to be
special. That I wasn't ready. That having sex so soon would ruin our
relationship. But it happened anyway.

Itold him he was hurting me and I tried to pull away. He pulled me
closer. In the end, after he was done, I interpreted it as a
"misunderstanding" –– surely he'd just been too drunk to listen. Surely
"nice guys" –– average, nerdy guys from Ohio –– don't rape women they
know.

It took me a year to talk openly about my experience. I told my best friend.
"He raped you," my friend said, putting the word on it. "You said no, he didn't listen. That's rape."

I started crying and couldn't stop. It was only then I finally allowed myself to realize I had indeed been raped.

The nightmare was –– I had continued to see my rapist. He'd told me
he was in love with me and wanted to marry me. And the part of me that
wanted sex to be a meaningful experience had "repurposed" my rape into
an act of love. It's amazing what a person can rationalize.

I went to a counselor at my university's health center, thinking
someone could tell me what to do. I was told I could see a graduate
student studying to be a therapist for free, but it would be filmed for
educational purposes. I never called back.

Instead, I decided to confront my boyfriend. He claimed he couldn't remember anything about the night, but then said to me:

What did you expect? A bed covered in rose petals? Nobody gets
that. I didn't get that. I wanted to fuck, I needed to fuck, so I
fucked. And, whatever, I guess I'm just the asshole who raped you.

My grades began to slip. My health declined –– I gained and lost
weight, I stopped having periods, my hair started falling out, I
developed a sleeping disorder. I pulled away from family and friends. I
went on medication for depression and anxiety.

It took me another 10 months to report my experience to the proper
authorities. In October 2012, my friend made a passing comment that I
should have recorded the conversation I'd had with my rapist where he'd
confessed to the rape. In California, secret recorded confessions are
legal, admissible evidence when they are used to prove that someone
committed a violent felony. Rape –– it should be said –– is a violent
felony.

So I arranged to make a recording. And my ex-boyfriend obligingly
confessed multiple times to forcing me to have sex with him. I provided
these recordings to the police in November 2012. I provided them to my
university in December 2012.

For months, my university has had audio recordings in which my rapist
states that he (1) does not remember anything about the night in
question, and (2) is so very sorry that he forced me to have sex with
him.

In testimony provided by my ex-boyfriend in his defense, however, he
now (conveniently, remarkably) remembers all sorts of details about the
night in question and specifically remembers numerous particulars that
he asserts are evidence of consent. He further maintains that I tricked
him into providing false confessions, insisting that he confessed to a
crime he did not commit only because he knew I would not leave him alone
until he had done so. I coerced him, you see –– not he me.
- - -
In February of this year, I was hospitalized because I was having
strong suicidal ideations. I couldn't live with the burden of being
invisible and set apart for even one more day. It was suggested to me
that I didn't have to wait for others to agree with me that what had
happened to me was wrong -- that I could do something about it myself,
if I really wanted.

I was told by two attorneys -- I could post my rapist's name to the
Internet, if I felt it was necessary to my emotional health. And so I
did.

I posted both his and mine. It was my emphatic rejection of both
invisibility and shame. Women from all over responded –– thanking me,
telling me that I had given them the courage to say the word "rape" and
speak the name of their rapists. And for their sisterhood, I am
profoundly grateful, because it helped make me feel visible and human
again.

Recently, I was also counter-sued by my rapist for libel. And I will
meet him in court with his confessions. Yes, I was "stupid" to trust him
not to rape, to be confused that he had raped me, and to try to
transform that violence into something human. But my stupidity does not
transmute his crime. The rape was still a rape. And I will do all I can
to make him reckon for it.
- - -
When asked for the third time by USC staff members what I wanted to
see as a result of their adjudication process, I said I wanted the
university to fulfill the promise made in its written policy of
expelling a student who commits rape while attending the university.

The staff member said to me: "That is not what we exist to do. This
is not a punitive process. This is a rehabilitative process. This is an
educative process."

I beg to disagree. If an academic institution fails to remove a
rapist from its student body, the school is not only contributing to the
victimization of the victim by further proving to the victim that she
(or he) is indeed invisible –– but it is additionally displaying wanton
disregard for the safety of any and all its other students.

Carly Mee is one of 37 students at Occidental College in Los Angeles,
California who have made headlines because of their class action
lawsuit filed against their university for violating Title IX. Mee's
rapist was expelled by Occidental, but allowed to return after he
appealed the decision. He then went on to rape at least three more
women.

The Occidental suit is one of a host of class actions that have been
filed across the country in the past few years; students at Amherst,
Yale and the University of North Carolina have also sued their schools
for failing to abide by Title IX and failing to adequately protect
student victims of sexual misconduct.

The admin building at USC

According to documentary filmmaker Suzanne Richiardone –– who is
currently working with Academy Award-winning Maha Productions to expose
the harsh realities faced by sexual assault victims –– women at
institutions across the country have begun "an underground movement" to
demand that their schools do more to protect female students.

The anti-rape coalition I co-founded this semester with a fellow
victim at the University of Southern California is now taking steps to
file a class action similar to Occidental's for the many women in our
group who were failed by USC's administration.
- - -
My rapist will be receiving his diploma in two weeks. Despite the
Obama Administration's pleas for swift adjudications of sexual
misconduct on college campuses receiving federal aid, as outlined in its
April 2011 "Dear Colleague"
letter, and despite the rights extended to female college students by
Title IX, my rapist will soon be a proud alum of the University of
Southern California.

The defamation suit my rapist has filed against me claims "assumption
of risk" as part of his defense. I can state unequivocally that I never
assumed that, by attending the University of Southern California, I was
risking becoming a rape victim.

By letting my boyfriend drink a glass of water and take some aspirin
after a party, I never assumed I had let a rapist into my apartment. How
could I have been expected to assume this? Because I am a woman? Is
that what it boils down to? Because I possess a vagina, I must
understand that my mere existence evinces a daily risk of victimization
and theft of personhood?

Fuck that noise. It's time to stand up, step forward, and stop the rape.

A magazine I never read posts an article which makes me glad I did. Below is the full article from Elle magazine.

Kim Gordon Sounds Off

In an exclusive in ELLE's May issue, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon
talks candidly about her next chapter, and what really happened between
her and Thurston Moore.

BY Lizzy GoodmanApril 22, 2013

Richard Kern

The last time I saw Kim Gordon, she was preparing a chicken for
roasting. This was several years ago, and I was reporting a piece about
the bohemian style of the Northampton, Massachusetts, home of indie
rock’s most powerful couple, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, of legendary
noise-rock band Sonic Youth. Moore gave me a tour of the veritable
record store that was his basement, and Gordon showed me her art studio
and racks of vintage clothes. I saw the rumpled sheets on the couple’s
bed, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer box set in their den, and the
refreshingly girly bedroom of their teenage daughter, Coco. But later,
to my friends, what I described was sitting at their kitchen table
watching Moore assemble cassette tapes for an upcoming release on his
Ecstatic Peace! label while his wife of some 20 years was elbow-deep in
poultry stuffing. In that moment, Gordon was the ultimate hipster
Renaissance woman I aspired to be, a feminist rebel who could make
avant-garde art all day, then cook a killer dinner for her family at
night.

Since forming Sonic Youth with Moore in 1981, Gordon has come to
personify two qualities generally considered incompatible: rebellion and
maturity. She played bass and guitar, wrote songs, and sang for Sonic
Youth, a band whose mission— infiltrate the mainstream with dissonant,
defiant guitar noise—shaped ’90s alternative rock. Gordon coproduced
Hole's debut album, Pretty on the Inside; nurtured a young Kurt
Cobain; put a teenage Chloë Sevigny on-screen for the first time,
alongside the infamous collection for Perry Ellis by then up-and-coming
designer Marc Jacobs; and, via the band’s album-cover art and videos,
helped popularize the work of such visionaries as Spike Jonze, Todd
Haynes, Gerhard Richter, Mike Kelley, and Richard Prince. Over the past
30 years she’s been considered an indie sex symbol, an iconoclastic
performer, and a de facto professor of modern feminist pop mystique (her
interest in Karen Carpenter, Madonna, and, more recently, Britney
Spears lent them depth).

And yet, as scrutinized as she has been, Gordon has always been
considered a mystery. A typical Sonic Youth interview featured Moore
waxing philosophical while Gordon, in sunglasses, sat by his side,
nearly silent. Aloof, remote, and intimidating are often used to
describe her. After decades in the public eye, it seemed like this was
the way things would always be. Then, in the fall of 2011, Gordon and
Moore announced they were separating. The news called into question the
future of Sonic Youth and devastated legions of music fans. Jon Dolan,
one of the flintiest rock critics around, began a piece for Grantland
about their breakup with this plaintive cry:
"Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

"I can understand people being curious," Gordon says when I ask her
about all the attention she’s gotten since the split. "I’m curious
myself. What’s going to happen now?"

It’s late afternoon on an unforgivingly cold winter day in New York
City. Gordon arrives a few minutes early at Sant Ambroeus, the
understated West Village restaurant she chose for our meeting. She’s
wearing eyeliner, a black-and-white-striped sweaterdress, and
cognac-brown boots. I find myself dissecting her look so I can copy it
later; such is the immediacy of her style. It would be rude to say
Gordon doesn’t look her age, which is 59. That’s a line reserved for
those who are desperately trying to appear young. There is nothing
desperate about Kim Gordon. When the subject of dating comes up, I’m not
surprised to hear that younger men are vying for her attention, though
the couple is not yet divorced.

"We have all these books, records, and art and are getting it all
assessed; that’s what is taking so long," she says after ordering a
glass of rosé. But both have moved on. Among her suitors are a
restaurateur, an architect, and an actor. "It’s just weird," Gordon says
of navigating new romance. "I can’t tell what’s normal." And Moore has
regularly been seen with the same woman, fueling the rumor that his
affair helped doom their marriage.
(Thurston Moore declined a request for an interview.) "We seemed to
have a normal relationship inside of a crazy world," Gordon says of her
marriage. "And in fact, it ended in a kind of normal way—midlife crisis,
starstruck woman."

Some years ago, a woman Gordon declines to name became a part of the
Sonic Youth world, first as the girlfriend of an erstwhile band member
and later as a partner on a literary project with Moore. Eventually,
Gordon discovered a text message and confronted him about having an
affair. They went to counseling, but he kept seeing the other woman. "We
never got to the point where we could just get rid of her so I could
decide what I wanted to do," Gordon says. "Thurston was carrying on this
whole double life with her. He was really like a lost soul." Moore
moved out. Gordon stayed home and listened to a lot of hip-hop. "Rap
music is really good when you’re traumatized," she says.

The first few months were rough. "It did feel like every day was
different," she recalls. "It's a huge, drastic change." But slowly
things improved. She adjusted to the framework of semisingle parenthood.
(Coco, their only child, is now a freshman at a Chicago art school.)
Gordon kept their colonial filled with friends—a musician, a poet, and
Moore’s adult niece, with whom Gordon has remained very close.
"Sometimes I cook dinner and just invite whomever," she says of her
improvised family life. "Everyone helps out a bit with the dogs. It’s a
big house. It’s nice to have people around." Things were stabilizing.
Then Gordon was found to have a noninvasive form of breast cancer called
DCIS. "I’m fine; it’s literally the best you can have," she says of her
diagnosis, which required a lumpectomy. "I didn’t do radiation or
anything, but I was like, Okay, what else is going to happen to me?"

Sitting across from Gordon, who has long been a role model for women
who want to be tough without becoming hard, I’m struck by how
well-placed in her our collective faith has been. "Kim comes off all
cool and badass, but she’s really sweet and gentle and feminine,"
longtime friend Sofia Coppola says, praising Gordon’s ability to draw
power from vulnerability. That trait is much in evidence when Gordon
discusses the recent past. She’s sad, and unafraid to show it, but she’s
also clear-eyed about how the dismantling of some areas of her life has
freed her up in others. “When you’re in a group, you’re always sharing
everything. It’s protected,” she says of being in Sonic Youth. “Your own
ego is not there for criticism, but you also never quite feel the full
power of its glory, either.” She’s done with that for now. “A few years
ago I started to feel like I owed it to myself to really focus on doing
art.”

Gordon has been painting a lot, in anticipation of a forthcoming
survey show at the White Columns gallery in New York. She also recently
worked on a capsule collection with French label Surface to Air and,
with Coco by her side, shot an ad campaign for Saint Laurent. She’s been
onstage quite a bit in the past year too, singing and playing guitar.
She joined musician John Cale in his tribute to former Velvet
Underground bandmate and muse Nico at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,
toured Europe with the experimental musician Ikue Mori, and took part in
the renowned “Face the Strange” music series hosted by the Museum of
Contemporary Art Chicago. And Gordon, like Moore, has a new band. This
year she’ll tour in support of the forthcoming debut album of Body/Head,
which she formed with longtime friend and collaborator Bill Nace. “I do
have a lot of things going on right now,” she says with a slight smile.

Gordon grew up mostly in Los Angeles; her father was a sociology
professor, and her mother a homemaker with creative tendencies. “She’d
make long caftans with hoods and sell them out of our house,” Gordon
remembers. Her mother and father had few traditional expectations of
her. “They were from a generation of hands-off parenting,” she says, and
cultivated in her two traits that an artist needs to survive:
intellectual curiosity and a near antiauthoritarian level of creative
independence. “I’ve never been good with structure—doing assignments for
the sake of them or doing things I’m supposed to do.”

She attended a progressive elementary school linked to UCLA and loved
it. “It was learn by doing,” she recalls. “So we were always making
African spears and going down to the river and making mud huts, or
skinning a cowhide and drying it and throwing it off the cliff at Dana
Point.”

The way Gordon talks about the L.A. of her youth conjures the
bleached-out, diffuse brutality of the city as portrayed in Joan
Didion’s classic collection The White Album. “I remember when we were
young, playing on these huge dirt mounds that became freeway on-ramps,”
Gordon says. “And my mom pointing to Century City, saying, ‘There’s
going to be a city there.’ I have a lot of nostalgia for Los Angeles at a
certain time—just the landscape, before it was overgrown with bad
stucco and mini malls and bad plastic surgery. It wasn’t like I was
happy. I don’t want to be back in that time, but it felt a lot more
open.”

If you had to describe the core sensibility of Gordon’s
work—painting, vocal performance, or dress—it would be that
quintessentially Californian expansive desolation. It’s a feeling, not
an idea, and it’s what first pulled Gordon away from fine art and toward
rock ’n’ roll. “When I came to New York, I’d go and see bands downtown
playing no-wave music,” she recalls of her arrival, after graduating
from art school. “It was expressionistic and it was also nihilistic.
Punk rock was tongue-in-cheek, saying, ‘Yeah, we’re destroying rock.’
No-wave music is more like, ‘NO, we’re really destroying rock.’ It was
very dissonant. I just felt like, Wow, this is really free. I could do
that.”

So she did. The Sonic Youth discography includes 16 studio albums and
numerous EPs and compilation albums, not to mention music videos and
documentaries. Their 1988 LP, Daydream Nation, was added to the
U.S. Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2005. Sonic
Youth is not just revered within the indie rock world; it’s an indelible
part of American pop-cultural history, a sort of byword for tasteful
and progressive art that’s also popular. “She was a forerunner,
musically,” says Kathleen Hanna, of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill and
later the dance-rock group Le Tigre. “Just knowing a woman was in a band
trading lead vocals, playing bass, and being a visual artist at the
same time made me feel less alone.” Hanna met Gordon when she came to a
Bikini Kill show in the early ’90s. “She invited my band to stay at her
and Thurston’s apartment,” Hanna says. “As a radical feminist singer, I
wasn’t particularly well liked. I was in a punk underground scene
dominated by hardcore dudes who yelled mean shit at me every night, and
journalists routinely called my voice shrill, unlistenable. Kim made me
feel accepted in a way I hadn’t before. Fucking Kim Gordon thought I was
on the right track, haters be damned. It made the bullshit easier to
take, knowing she was in my corner.”

Gordon’s anodyne vocals and whirling dervish stage presence are as
much a Sonic Youth signature as Moore’s and Lee Ranaldo’s discordant
guitars, but her pursuit of additional creative outlets helped others
think more broadly about what it could mean to be in a rock band. “Kim
inspired me because she tried all the things that interested her,”
Coppola says. “She just did what she was into.” Hanna agrees. “I loved
so many kinds of art besides music, and it sometimes made me feel torn,
but Kim seemed very comfortable doing whatever she felt like at the
time.”

“I never really thought of myself as a musician,” Gordon says. “I’m
not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way
it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about
popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do
something.”

We’ve finished the dregs of our wine, and the sun has set. I’m
interested in something Gordon was filmed saying about imprisoned
members of the Russian activist punk band Pussy Riot: “Women make
natural anarchists and revolutionaries, because they’ve always been
second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up.” Gordon
nods as I read back her quote: “I mean, who made up all the rules in the
culture? Men—white male corporate society. So why wouldn’t a woman want
to rebel against that?”

Part of my own affection for Kim Gordon, I realize, is her
association with an era when even boys thought it was cool to call
themselves feminists. I’m not sure when exactly that changed, but I know
that by the time I was aware of experiencing sexism firsthand I’d
already gotten the message that to identify myself as a feminist would
limit me. I envy and admire the way Gordon—and the pop-cultural heroes
she helped shape, like Hanna and Coppola and Courtney Love—seemed
unafraid of that word. But I am even more envious and admiring of the
way the men in Gordon’s orbit—from the Beastie Boys, who played with
Sonic Youth over the years, to Moore to Cobain, who was very close to
Gordon—seem to have taken cues from her about how to be good men.

It’s easy to forget that the ideals Gordon championed are now taken
for granted by a younger generation, a fact driven home when Gordon
mentions Lena Dunham’s Girls. Despite being a fan of the hit
show (“I love that all of the sex scenes are awkward and kind of a
failure”), she’s troubled by what she calls a “misleading” scene in
which Marnie sleeps with Hannah’s gay roommate. At one point Marnie says
no, but they proceed to have sex, and her objection becomes part of
their sex-ual play. “It’s a mixed message about what no means,” Gordon
points out. It’s part of an “ironic Williamsburg hipster” pose, she goes
on, that considers political correctness kind of square. “If you’re
going to do that [in Girls], you also have to—in some other
instance—show that it’s not cool.” For a show that’s been written about
nearly to death, it’s an observation that seems both totally obvious and
underdiscussed.

“What the breach of generations shows is that there’s more than one
way to be feminist,” Gordon says. Indeed, her admirers put her in the
same hallowed category in which she puts such figures as Didion, Jane
Fonda, and, now, Hillary Clinton. When Gordon recalls Clinton being
grilled by Congress in her final hearings, it’s with deep reverence. “It
just showed how experienced she is and how inexperienced those other
guys were—she was masterful, the way she handled them. She’s a living
embodiment of being pro-women.”

Is Testosterone to blame for the Boston Bombings?

April 23, 2013 - 11:55PM

Hugo Schwyzer

Author, speaker and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Pasadena City College

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19.

Why did they do it? It's a familiar question we're asking in
the aftermath of the Boston bombings; the only variation is that with
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, we're talking about murderous brothers
instead of a homicidal lone wolf.

Was it radical Islamism, or Chechen nationalism, or a growing
disaffection with American materialism that drove these young men to
kill and maim so many last week? While pundits debate these
possibilities, they're missing the real answer, writes Lisa Miller in New York Magazine.
That answer, she claims, is the testosterone that courses through young
men's bodies, driving all to distraction and some – like the Tsarnaevs –
to unspeakable violence.

“Evil may not have a single face, but it can be reliably
found within one kind of body: that of an angry man in his late teens or
20s,” Miller writes, referencing US killers such as Adam Lanza, Timothy
McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, James Eagan Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho.

In exploring why virtually all mass murderers are young men, Miller
suggests we think of testosterone, “the aggression drug”, as “perhaps
the only place to start” looking for an answer: “[The] male proclivity
to assert power through violence has been true for males, and not for
females, for millions of years, which is why when you give your
four-year-old daughter a toy sword to play with, she may just turn it
into a fairy wand and go on with her day.”

Like so many who rely nearly exclusively on biological
explanations for human behaviour, Miller sees sex differences as a
dichotomy, rather than a spectrum. In reality boys are as different
from each other as they are from girls – and girls are capable of
remarkably enthusiastic violence.

(I don't know if Miller actually has a four-year-old daughter, but
I'm blessed with just such a creature. I guarantee you that if I were
to hand Heloise a toy sword, she would not, as Miller writes, 'just turn
it into a fairy wand and go on with her day'. My four-year-old would
soon smite her baby brother a mighty blow. She has tea parties with her
dollies, and when she's done, she not infrequently smashes them to bits.
She lacks impulse control not because she's “boyish” but because she's
four.)

Those who insist on rigidly gendered explanations for
tragedies like Boston don't just posit young men as helpless in the face
of a testosterone tempest. They also refuse to recognize that girls,
despite much lower levels of that “aggression drug”, also have a very
real capacity for anger, irrationality, and lust.
Miller claims that “men are likelier than women to act out
vengeance, partly because their brains do not propel them to seek help,
to pick up the phone or see a shrink, when enraged”. This is the
classic error of mistaking cultural conditioning for biological
predisposition.

From Chechnya to Cambridge, Massachusetts, boys are raised to see
“seeking help” as something feminine, and therefore to be avoided. When
boys are beaten and mocked for showing weakness, they hide their
vulnerability.

When they're praised for aggression and taking foolish risks,
they learn that recklessness and violence are key to establishing their
masculine credentials. Our young men are not consumed with anger
because they're at the mercy of their hormones, but because they've been
denied access to any emotion other than rage.
You don't have to believe that “nature” has no impact on
human behaviour in order to argue that “nurture” (how we raise our
children) offers an equally important influence. Hormones are part of
our human hardwiring, but socialisation is what teaches boys when and
how to direct the aggressive, protective, sexual urges that testosterone
creates.

Impulses may be rooted in biology, but how those impulses
manifest has everything to do with culture. Create a culture in which
boys have options other than violence and they will become less violent;
create a culture in which women can pursue intellectual, sexual, and
sporting ambitions, and they will become far more frank about what it is
they want and how badly they want it.

In his best-selling The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker makes a compelling, well-documented case that violence has been on the decline for centuries.

While conceding that in both past and present it is young men
who commit the overwhelming majority of killings, Pinker argues that
the “civilising influences” of urbanisation, marriage and even women's
empowerment have radically reduced the incidences of male violence
around the world. Young men still have testosterone coursing through
their veins, but culture has the demonstrated power to determine what
kind of behaviours that “aggression drug” will actually cause.

While we don't yet know all we need to know in order to
understand what motivated the Tsarnaev brothers, we do know that what
causes terrorism isn't testosterone. The source of such appalling
violence isn't what flows inside young men's bodies. The source of the
violence is the cultural straitjacket that suppresses and shames any
sign of weakness and any plea for help.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Today marks the 14th anniversary of the
Columbine Tragedy. On April 20th, 1999, twelve students and one
teacher were shot at Columbine High School, in Columbine, Colorado.

The teenage gunmen were Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold.

Both committed suicide after the shootings.

Staff and Students Evacuating the Building

To learn more about the victims go to the memoriam page from acolumbinesite.com. The information available has been obtained from the Columbine Report and news.

The best sources for Columbine information and research are the following:A Columbine Site(Offers
good information about the events. Journal entries from the shooters,
autopsy information, police reports, information about the victims, the
school and the aftermath.)

Columbine by Dave Cullen(This
is the best book about Columbine that you will find today. I first read
it in 2009 at its release. Cullen spent 10 years working on this book
and it gives insight and explanations to the events and the reasons
behind it.You'll learn that the shootings weren't about jocks against
goths. The boys were very different in their personalities. A
devastating but important read).To read my former Columbine Anniversary posts, see below:

The events taught us to question, to dig deep, to explore the psychology of sociopathy and death, to know that evil exists, as does true love. We learned what happens when a community bans together. Columbine garnered support from individuals from around the globe. Columbine, we remember you still.

Today is an ode to indie. Today we celebrate the wonder that is the independent music store. It is indeed something to celebrate as record stores are dying and they have been for quite some time. Today is marked by celebrations across record stores worldwide. In-store performances and sales on cds and vinyl's.

The record store of my dreams is located in Hollywood, CA. I often refer to Amoeba Records as my heaven or nirvana. A glorious sight to see. A friggin' warehouse full of music, and walled by posters, fliers and stickers. The store is staffed with knowledgeable music lovers, who know the merch well. The store also has locations in San Francisco and Berkley.

I am a 32 year old woman who is probably not all that hip to what the "kids" are up to these days. I do, however, know that CDs are becoming ancient relics to those who have embraced the ipod as a segway to itunes. The hunt is still a desire for some of us old time folks, but even old-timers are not immune to the temptation to download.I've been collecting CDs since the age of 15 and my collection consists of well over 2,000 shiny disks that are accompanied by artwork, lyrics, photos, credits, dates and named record labels. You don't get that from a prompt that informs you that your quick fix is "downloading....."

“I love the smell of them. I love that people actually care for and know about the music they are selling.”- Neko Case

“I have watched independent record stores evaporate all over America
and Europe. That's why I go into as many as I can and buy records
whenever possible. If we lose the independent record store, we lose big.
Every time you buy your records at one of these places, it's a blow to
the empire.”- Henry Rollins

“I think it’s high time the mentors, big brothers, big sisters,
parents, Guardians, and neighborhood ne’er do wells, start taking
younger people That look up to them To a real record store and show
them what an important part of life music really is. I trust no one
who hasn’t time for music. What a shame to Leave a child, or worse, a
generation orphaned from one of life’s great beauties. And to the
record stores, artists, labels, dj’s, and journalists; we’re all in
this together. Show respect for the tangible music that you’ve
dedicated your careers and lives to, and help It from becoming nothing
more than disposable digital data.”- Jack White

"Independent record stores are aural cathedrals, havens for those who
find music as much a spiritual endeavor as passing entertainment. Indie
employees will go out of their way to help you find a rare or
back-catalogued recording, commiserating over neglected artists &
all-but-forgotten masterpieces. They offer discounts & suggest
records they enjoy with genuine interest & enthusiasm. Indies embody
mom&pop, individualist expression - they're in it for love, not to
turn a huge profit or to bend popular taste to a uniform will. viva la
indie!"- Nellie McKay"Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors keep'em open they're the ears of the town” - Tom Waits

Website Description:Last Shop Standing is a film about independent record shops and
independent record stores. It charts the rise the fall and the rebirth
of the independent record shop. Last Shop Standing has gained 5 star
reviews from Q magazine and, 4 stars in record collector magazine and a
half page spread in the sunday observer. Last Shop Standing is made by
vinyl record fans, for vinyl record fans. Blue Hippo Media are an
independent film company and they are the creators of the film Last Shop
Standing, which is based on the book of the same name by Graham Jones
who is a huge vinyl record collector and has the claim to fame of
visiting the most independent record stores in the world.

Last Shop Standing: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Independent Record Shop - documentary film - 2012

The DVD drops, April 23rd, 2013. That of course, is just around the corner. To pre-order, click here.

Record Store Day website is so excited by the day's celebration that it actually presents a countdown to the next Record Store Day. Enjoy this one until the next one folks! Happy Record Store Day, all!

Wintermint is my favorite color. I'm very picky about mint, however, I take chances as it is a rarity that I find a piece of wardrobe that gets it just right.

I purchased this shoe and it has yet to arrive. The material is leather and I'm hoping that the hue will not come off as clay.

The shoe also comes Black, Lavender, Tan, and Copper. I would have sought the Lavender but I am not pleased with it.

Turning Point (Green)

The above shoe color is advertised as Green. This appears to be more of a Teal: this is what I'm hoping for.

The shoe also comes in Clay, Nude, Plum, Yellow, and Black.

It's important to mention that it remains appalling that wardrobe companies are still labeling light tan colors as nude. Nude comes in many colors, and to suggest otherwise is oppressive.A side note that may have brought this breezy post, to a halt, but we need to address these things as they arise.

About Me

I believe story telling is an art form and blogging is a medium in which to share stories and ideas. Within this blog I hope to cover a spectrum of topics. From the serious to the silly. Here you will read my views and inquiries about subjects such as feminism, other various socio-political issues, psychology, spirituality, sexuality, and general interests such as film, art and music. You will also be exposed to my obsession with cupcakes, tea, books, Hello Kitty, and quirky day to day journeys. I enjoy learning from others as I am constantly attempting to introspect, grow and evolve. During this process I will be jotting down musings on this blog. Pull up a comfy chair and a spot of tea and join me!